HELP NEEDED

greenhill

hey everyone

i am looking to put a microsoft access program i have online. The program consists of an input page and a page you can view data on. Till now i have been sending out the surveys myself and filling out the info but i would now like to make the survey dynamic online in such a way that people can go and fill out the form and view all of the other results from the survey. As i have said the program is in microsoft access format and i have no experience in online programs.

Where would i start making this website? I know i need a website itself but how do i put the program online and what are the complications invloved?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as im stuck in a rut with this at the moment

KStaford

greenhill

1 Option is to retain the Access DB and use .Net to develope the website. You will need a web hosting service that provides .Net 2 or higher. I think GoDaddy do on their free hosts as do practically allthe paid hosts.

You can develope web applications in .Net using Visual Studio. You use it to create ASP.Net web pages (aspx extension). You can use either Visual Basic or C# as your programming language - either will work. Visual Studio/.Net provide an array of tools for connectig various databases to Web forms including Access DB's. Visual Studio Express is available free from Microsoft.

If all this is double dutch to you, then I'd advise getting a tech savvy friend to help or maybe asking a student to help as part of a project etc. The above is a huge learning curve if you are coming at it as a beginner (not to be taken lightly)

Evil Phil

I would advise against using access as the db for a web application. Go with SQL Server if you want a pure microsoft solution.

kayos

Evil Phil wrote: »

I would advise against using access as the db for a web application. Go with SQL Server if you want a pure microsoft solution.

+1

Access and Web dont really go together. The Access engine is a knobbled SQL Server engine and once you get any sort of concurrency (5 connections +) on the DB it will fall over and die a death in terms of performance.

amen

no affiliation but I have used them http://www.surveymonkey.com/
plus there are loads of others.
don't reinvent the wheel if you don;t have to

none

kayos wrote: »

+1

Access and Web dont really go together. The Access engine is a knobbled SQL Server engine and once you get any sort of concurrency (5 connections +) on the DB it will fall over and die a death in terms of performance.

No, Access is the best choice for the beginners. You will hardly be concerned with performance but rather with how to make it work and Access allows for a quick creation of a simple DB schema that you can use from ASP (or ASP.NET). If your logic works fine in Access, it will most of the time have no problems on SQL Server if you do get performance issues and decide to upgrade at some stage. With Access you can concentrate on your frontend while with SQL Server you will have to learn some DBA things first which make take a good while.

Tom Dunne

none wrote: »

No, Access is the best choice for the beginners. You will hardly be concerned with performance but rather with how to make it work and Access allows for a quick creation of a simple DB schema that you can use from ASP (or ASP.NET). If your logic works fine in Access, it will most of the time have no problems on SQL Server if you do get performance issues and decide to upgrade at some stage. With Access you can concentrate on your frontend while with SQL Server you will have to learn some DBA things first which make take a good while.

Read what he is asking - the front end is a web browser, not an Access front end. And putting an Access DB behind a web site is just silly talk.

Developing a functional website is not for a beginner.

Evil Phil

Access was never designed for web use and would cripple a site. Sql server may be over complicated but I do believe that its not the difficult to import an access schema into sql server.

none

Tom Dunne wrote: »

Read what he is asking - the front end is a web browser, not an Access front end. And putting an Access DB behind a web site is just silly talk.

Developing a functional website is not for a beginner.

That's exactly what I'm saying - if you want to develop any frontend or middle tier, you're better off concentrating on it rather than the backend intricacies. Since your DB is already ready, you just put it on the site as is and ply away with the other parts of the application. When the first prototype of your app is ready, you may get back and enhance/upgrade your backend but only if you have real concerns with it. Having a simple site with a few dozens of users is just fine for the Access backend. Seems like the OP's idea with online surveys may well fall into this category if that's just for friends and family.

Evil Phil wrote: »

Access was never designed for web use and would cripple a site. Sql server may be over complicated but I do believe that its not the difficult to import an access schema into sql server.

No mainstream database system was specifically designed for the Web as far as I know. But if you have 10 people on your site Access is by far a better choice than Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL Server. That's all I wanted to say - it all depends on 1) your resources and 2) your target audience. And of course, moving from Access to SQL Server, as I said previously, shouldn't be a big deal

pauldiv

Greenhill, hiya.

The converstion is getting very technical too quickly. Although some of what was said above is correct it will not really help you at this stage. Why not tell us more about what it is you are trying to do. What would the ideal solution?

Examples-
What do you want to do with the survey data?
How many surveys do you process each week?

These types of questions are basic but could make this thread more productive. If you can provide a clear understanding of the problem then you will get far.

If you know exaclty what you are up against then you can then find the best technical solution. You might even find in the end that Access is not the best tool for this job.